–Richard David­son at the Mind­ful­ness & Well-Being at Work con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 13–14, 2015, in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. Pho­to: Auey San­tos

There’s a back­lash brew­ing against mind­ful­ness at work.

“Cor­po­ra­tions have jumped on the mind­ful­ness band­wag­on because it con­ve­nient­ly shifts the bur­den onto the indi­vid­ual employ­ee,” write Ron Purs­er and David Loy in the Huff­in­g­ton Post. “Stress is framed as a per­son­al prob­lem, and mind­ful­ness is offered as just the right med­i­cine to help employ­ees work more effi­cient­ly and calm­ly with­in tox­ic envi­ron­ments.”

Do such argu­ments have sci­en­tif­ic mer­it? Or do they throw the mind­ful baby out with the cor­po­rate bath water?

These are ques­tions I explored with speak­ers and par­tic­i­pants at the recent con­fer­ence Mind­ful­ness & Well-Being at Work, orga­nized at UC Berke­ley by the Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter, Mind­ful mag­a­zine, and the 1440 Mul­ti­ver­si­ty.

Many of the peo­ple I spoke with agreed that mind­ful­ness pro­grams, which are just start­ing to get off the ground, have problems—but not, per­haps, the ones cit­ed by crit­ics in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon.com, and else­where. Researchers, mind­ful­ness teach­ers, and busi­ness experts all seem to agree that red flags go up when cor­po­ra­tions start to mess with the minds of their employ­ees. And yet more and more stud­ies are find­ing that the train­ing also con­fers many benefits—not the least of which is a stronger sense of self-con­trol.

“Our brains are always being shaped, wit­ting­ly or unwit­ting­ly,” said pio­neer­ing mind­ful­ness researcher Richard David­son in his con­fer­ence keynote. Mind­ful­ness, he said, “is a way of tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your own mind.”

What is mindfulness at work supposed to do?

As work­place mind­ful­ness pro­grams, such as SIYLI and the Poten­tial Project, have grown, so has the cho­rus of crit­i­cism. Many of these pro­grams and exper­i­men­tal inter­ven­tions aim to min­i­mize the time involved. They are mov­ing online, and are try­ing to short­en the com­mit­ment to as lit­tle as two weeks or just ten min­utes a day. Most focus on stress reduc­tion, build­ing on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s famed and research-test­ed Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Reduc­tion pro­gram.

For crit­ics, that’s pre­cise­ly the prob­lem. On Salon.com, for exam­ple, Ronald Purs­er and Edwin Ng quite rea­son­ably point out that “employ­ee stress is not self-imposed nor due to a lack of mind­ful­ness.” Instead, stress aris­es from exter­nal, often unfair, conditions—such as job inse­cu­ri­ty or con­stant tech­no­log­i­cal change—that mind­ful­ness might only mit­i­gate, or so cor­po­ra­tions seem to hope.

The solu­tion, Purs­er and Ng argue, is to change work­places, not change your­self. They dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty that help­ing employ­ees to cul­ti­vate moment-to-moment aware­ness might actu­al­ly help them to change work­places.

This, of course, seems to sug­gest that stress relief is an unwor­thy goal, and per­haps even a dis­trac­tion from high­er-lev­el sys­temic changes. In the UK mag­a­zine The Con­ver­sa­tion, Zoë Krup­ka goes fur­ther, charg­ing that cor­po­ra­tions are co-opt­ing mind­ful­ness and turn­ing it into “a sim­ple way to bear the unbear­able.”

Her charge is not against mind­ful­ness itself but against quick-and-easy cor­po­rate mind­ful­ness. As Krup­ka writes, “This is per­haps the crux of the prob­lem of the mind­less appli­ca­tion of Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion prac­tice: the mar­ket­ing of mind­ful­ness as a solu­tion to work stress and life bal­ance rather than the com­plex spir­i­tu­al approach to liv­ing it is meant to be.”

Indeed, many of the pre­sen­ters at the con­fer­ence seemed intent on per­suad­ing the audi­ence that mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion is good for the bot­tom line, point­ing to a ris­ing num­ber of stud­ies that sug­gest mind­ful­ness could increase cus­tomer hap­pi­ness, improve deci­sion-mak­ing, or build self-con­fi­dence in lead­ers, all of which can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly help make the busi­ness more suc­cess­ful as a busi­ness.

One speak­er, Jacque­line Carter, high­light­ed a ben­e­fit I had nev­er even thought of: that mind­ful­ness train­ing can help save lives in cer­tain jobs. We might find it fun­ny to imag­ine burly car­pen­ters and elec­tri­cians sit­ting on cush­ions with their legs crossed and eyes closed, but in the con­struc­tion indus­try, said Carter, the train­ing has a very con­crete ben­e­fit.

Mindful practice, modest goals

This made me real­ize that some of the high-lev­el crit­i­cisms of mind­ful­ness train­ing at work might be miss­ing the point.

Mind­ful­ness might not address work­place inequal­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty, as Purs­er and Ng allege—but is it sup­posed to? Isn’t it enough to sim­ply inte­grate decades of insight gen­er­at­ed by hun­dreds of stud­ies into the train­ings that are a part of all work­places, so that employ­ees can ben­e­fit in ways that are spe­cif­ic to their indus­tries? If brief train­ing in mind­ful breath­ing and body scans helps con­struc­tion work­ers stay safe, is that real­ly so bad?

It may also be too much to ask sec­u­lar mind­ful­ness train­ing on the job to have the same impact as sus­tained Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. One recent study, for exam­ple, found that two weeks of work­place train­ing that includ­ed read­ing and 10 min­utes of guid­ed med­i­ta­tion led to bet­ter sleep qual­i­ty. Of course, the train­ing isn’t a cure-all—participants “did not demon­strate sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ments in their abil­i­ty to psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly detach from work,” which was one of the hoped-for results of the train­ing.

“It is like­ly you would have to train more intense­ly or for longer peri­ods of time before you see any effects on psy­cho­log­i­cal detach­ment,” said Ute Hül­sheger, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of work and orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy at Maas­tricht Uni­ver­si­ty and the lead author of the study. “But it is pos­si­ble that sleep qual­i­ty is more sen­si­tive to med­i­ta­tion and that you see the pos­i­tive effects of the mind­ful­ness train­ing ear­li­er.”

In fact, a great deal of on-the-job mind­ful­ness train­ing can nev­er be more than a sim­ple teas­er for the employ­ee. We don’t yet know if these quick train­ings can open the door to a deep­er prac­tice out­side of work, but it seems rea­son­able to sup­pose they might. As Hülsheger’s com­ment sug­gests, there is a great deal we don’t yet know for sure.

How could we? It’s only in the past few years that busi­ness­es have start­ed offer­ing mind­ful­ness train­ing to employ­ees. The peo­ple doing and tak­ing the train­ing now are pioneers—and pio­neers make mis­takes.

What do you do with awareness?

Our lack of knowl­edge seemed to par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­ble Purs­er and Ng, who crit­i­cize cor­po­rate mind­ful­ness from a Bud­dhist per­spec­tive.

They quote Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty asso­ciate pro­fes­sor Jere­my Hunter, ital­i­ciz­ing words that indi­cate pos­si­bil­i­ties, not cer­tain­ties: “If an orga­ni­za­tion can work cre­ative­ly with the ques­tions that increased per­son­al aware­ness can churn up, that could be a great asset.”

In our con­ver­sa­tion at the Mind­ful­ness & Well-Being con­fer­ence, Hunter explic­it­ly agreed with Purs­er and Ng on many of their points, par­tic­u­lar­ly the idea that mind­ful­ness train­ing shouldn’t be under­tak­en lightly—or invol­un­tar­i­ly. “Com­pul­so­ry mind­ful­ness at work is not a good idea,” he said.

Much of the prob­lem with mind­ful­ness at work boils down to a para­dox: Mind­ful­ness asks the prac­ti­tion­er to open up doors with­in them­selves in an oth­er­wise imper­son­al work con­text.

Among oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties, Hunter said, “We need to acknowl­edge the real­i­ty of trau­ma.” Before work­place train­ings he con­ducts, Hunter inter­views every­one who is going to par­tic­i­pate about their his­to­ry, ask­ing specif­i­cal­ly about expe­ri­ences of vio­lence or abuse, which recent research has found can be ampli­fied by mind­ful­ness train­ing. The train­ing can’t leave peo­ple hang­ing, said Hunter.

“What do you do with this aware­ness? Share it? Keep it inside?”

This might be ulti­mate­ly what makes the crit­ics uncom­fort­able: Mind­ful­ness train­ing seems like anoth­er way for employ­ers to invade and con­trol our inner lives. In her essay, Krup­ka seems espe­cial­ly con­cerned that cor­po­rate mind­ful­ness train­ing could end up essen­tial­ly being a form of mind con­trol.

“Mind­ful­ness is an ide­al tool to induce com­pli­ance, with its focus on the indi­vid­ual man­age­ment of our respons­es to forces we’re being told are well beyond our con­trol,” she writes.

This is a crit­i­cism that makes Hunter impa­tient. He argues that most “sophis­ti­cat­ed man­agers” are gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in the well-being of employ­ees. Even if that weren’t true, how­ev­er, mind­ful­ness is a skill that can be used in many ways.

“Most of life is sub­ject to forces well beyond our con­trol,” he wrote to me in an email after the con­fer­ence. “Any­one with chron­ic ill­ness, scream­ing chil­dren, or an air­line fre­quent fli­er account could tell you that. Hav­ing more tools to bear the unbear­able is always a good thing.”

While this year’s Mind­ful­ness & Well-Being at Work con­fer­ence focused large­ly on empow­er­ing par­tic­i­pants to go back to work on Mon­day and devel­op new pro­grams, future gath­er­ings will, I sus­pect, con­tain a great deal more dis­agree­ment as well as news of real-world results.

Mind­ful­ness might not cre­ate utopi­an workplaces—but all the research and anec­dotes to date sug­gest that it pro­duces mod­est but mea­sur­able improve­ments in the well-being of the work­ers. That’s well worth pur­su­ing.

– Jere­my Adam Smith is pro­ducer and edi­tor of Greater Good, an online mag­a­zine based at UC-Berke­ley that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. He is also the author or coed­i­tor of four books, includ­ing The Dad­dy Shift, Are We Born Racist?, and The Com­pas­sion­ate Instinct. Before join­ing the GGSC, Jere­my was a 2010-11 John S. Knight Jour­nal­ism Fel­low at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. Pub­lished here by cour­tesy of Greater Good.

About SharpBrains

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, CNN, Reuters and more, SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science.